Juliana Cerqueira Leite

A Potential Space is an artist’s book by Brazilian sculptor Juliana Cerqueira Leite that proposes a re-reading of the cultural and theoretical frameworks that surround representations of the female sex. This book focuses on how the anatomy of vaginas and how their lack of adequate representation contributes to the stereotyping and mythologizing of womanhood. An organ capable of generating space, the vagina is mostly represented as open, when in fact it rests in a closed and therefore difficult to represent state. This rendering as open ends up encoding the expectation of certain characteristics and behaviors onto bodies that have vaginas.

The book contains no printed text, instead 83 laser-cut pages accrete into a small negative space. These outlines combine to represent the inner topography of a vagina, originally cast inside of a body that is not the artist’s body, then 3D scanned, now contained as negative space within the book. The book is accompanied by a folded insert with a text by the artist, elaborating on the challenges of representing this potential space.

Published 2016 / 75 editions 8 APs / Coptic bound hardcover by Small Editions NY / Letterpress by Middle Press / Offset Print by Rolling Press